Everyone Calls Her Sunshine
by Cavaticarose
Summary: Hannah's about to give Veronica Shepard an earful, but her hands are glowing and she hates it.


**2166**

"Veronica, come over to my office now, please."

I freeze when I hear her voice over the comm. I glance around nervously as the other ship kids give me mean grins or worse, looks of pity. This fucking sucks, I didn't even _do_ anything this time.

Ok, well, I _did_ , but Christ, how'd she find out?

I jump off my bunk, power down my holo-pad and _lock_ it this time, and make the long trek through the ship corridors. I don't like this ship at all. It's too loud and too clunky, and my dad keeps complaining that everything breaks all the time. There's always this whiny humming sound at night-cycle and I can't sleep, the cook here isn't as nice as on Arcturus, and won't even let me make my own damn chili-cheese fries. And he always says they're out of hot sauce, but I _saw_ other people with hot sauce and he just doesn't like me.

This place sucks.

By the time I get to the door of my mom's office, I'm trying way too hard not to flare up. It's been getting harder and harder to control, especially ever since we had to evacuate the _St. Helen_. We went into chemical meltdown right when my dad was trying to show me all the cool new tech. Next thing we knew, the air went bad, we had to pod out, and I woke up in the medical bay of some other ship and swear to God I was _glowing._ They said it was a bad dream, but I look at my hands now and it's a nightmare.

I try to breath and count, then with one more deep breath, I hit the alert button.

The door slides open, and I walk in to see my mom, Hannah 'Sunshine' Shepard, breaking down a Lancer and giving me a blank look as I sit down.

"So," she starts, reaching across her desk for her gun oil. "A little birdy told me that you had a disagreement with the Bates kid on the crew deck."

 _Oh. That._

"You… could say that," I mumble.

"What happened?" She sets about cleaning the cylinders first, removing the particle block and heat diffusers. Same scratchy sound.

"Jimmy was being mean to Aaliyah and called her a thot, which is _really_ mean and no one _says_ that anymore. So after we looked it up, I told him so and then he started calling _me_ the same thing!" I blurt out. "So I wailed on him because he wouldn't shut up, and I _hate_ it here!"

She stops cleaning her gun long enough to stare at me, and I look down and I'm glowing _again_. This sucks and I don't know what's going on, but the air around me smells bad all the time and it makes my eyes water and all I want to do is yell and cry. And maybe she sees that, because she gets up from her desk and hugs me, and the air stops smelling bad, and I stop feeling all stingy everywhere.

"What's wrong with me, Mama?" I whisper, and I can feel tears falling down my cheeks.

"Nothing's wrong," she says back, but her voice is off, and I don't really believe her. "Nothing's wrong, but I think you're just a little different right now is all." She breaks the hug and looks at me, and her eyes are sad and too shiny, like she's about to cry too. "Just, if you feel like you're starting to get angry, do me a favor and count backwards."

I nod, and suddenly I feel bad for even crying, but the counting thing isn't working anymore. I wipe away the tears and bite the inside of my cheek until I feel back to normal.

"In the meantime," she says, voice back to normal, "I'm going to enroll you in some lessons. You got exposed to eezo from that meltdown a couple years ago, but you already knew that. That was your second exposure."

I frown. "Second?"

"First time was while I was pregnant. We've been keeping an eye out, but now…" She sighs, and heads back to her desk. "I think lessons will be the right thing for you now. Biotic training."

"Biotic? Mom, those people are freaks, they're gonna dig up in my brain!" I say, shocked.

"Don't be so dramatic. There's _one_ implant surgery, and a lot of lessons on concentration." She looks at me, eyes sad again. "And don't call people freaks. Especially since you're a biotic too," she says with a small smile.

I slump in my chair. "I hate it here," I mumble.

"Don't slouch. And since you hate it here so much, you'll be happy to know that training is back on Arcturus. But it means you won't be on a ship with me or your father. Do you think you can handle that?"

"Of course I can," I say, giving her a lazy salute. "I'm almost an adult anyway, and I'm gonna be N7 like Anderson."

"We'll discuss that later. One step at a time. I'll file the paperwork for training, and we'll see that you get enrolled. In the meantime, stow it with the temper and attitude, apologize to the Bates kid, and mind yourself." She sets about cleaning her Lancer again and gives me a hard look.

I stand at attention, and give her a salute, a real one. "Aye aye, ma'am!"

She smiles a little at that. "Dismissed, kiddo."


End file.
